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Comment by millzlane | Hacker News Reader

Saved you a click: It's to prevent friendly fire during a shootout.

That's what I figured-- it's fairly obvious: "why would unrecognizable cops have a symbol on their weapon?" "Gee, maybe so other cops know they're cops?".

Why this is news or on hackernews is beyond me though.

>That's what I figured-- it's fairly obvious: "why would unrecognizable cops have a symbol on their weapon?" "Gee, maybe so other cops know they're cops?".

What's obvious to some is not always obvious to others.

>Why this is news or on hackernews is beyond me though.

TheDrive isn't so much a news website as it is a magazine. This article is more informative than anything, and going back to my previous remark, it educates those who might not've thought about this sort of thing before. As to why it's on HN, same reason; not everybody would assume as much.

Come on, the whole article is mostly rephrasing of the same statement interspersed with tweetquotes. Written to meet word count quota.

>Come on...

... what? I haven't commented on the quality of the article at all.

Perhaps your confusion lies in my saying, "This article is more informative than anything...", but that was just me saying that the article was written as an informative piece, not a piece of news, because TheDrive is a magazine and not necessarily a news outlet.

Fwiw it wasn't obvious to me until I read the article. I know nothing at all about guns. So I learned something.

I know about digital IFF but I had never given much thought to "old school analog" IFF.

I sort of assumed that uniforms were the primary mechanism, but obviously they can be spoofed, and with "tacticool" fashion as prevalent as it is they can be trivially spoofed. I never gave it enough thought to think up or chase down the actual solution. "They hand out gun stickers" is a delightfully simple and practical answer.

This is the best bit of trivia I've learned all day.

Not really. If you can spoof a uniform you can spoof a sticker.

And given it’s not a reliable negative identifier, it’s probably not a huge help anyway.

You can't spoof a sticker you don't know about, because they handed it out that day. It's a shared secret.

Cool, fta just said some had stickers and some didn’t. Now you’re just adding confusion into the mix.

In the 1980s, the NYPD used elastic headbands. There was a color or pattern for the day, and plainclothes cops were issued the proper headband at the station.

I wonder what they're using now, headbands being so over.

They use armbands now: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nypd-arm-bands/

Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_day_(police)

This is like the invasion stripes of aircraft I mentioned in another comment. Interesting to know that it is an actual thing.

I don't know about digital IFF. I had to look it up, stands for "Identification friend or foe". Does "digital" mean it's just for military applications of identifying ships and aircraft, or is that something you broadcast from a computer in a security/pen-testing context?

> I sort of assumed that uniforms were the primary mechanism, but obviously they can be spoofed, and with "tacticool" fashion as prevalent as it is they can be trivially spoofed.

This has been a plot point in various movies. See also dressing up as troopers in Star Wars.

There's a 'what to do if you're an evil genius' guide floating around, and one of the recommendations is to make sure that helmets had clear masks so people's faces could be seen—at least in the Evil HQ.

I read a rendition of that Evil Genius How To and never understood that point until now: as someone evil, I want my minions to be faceless and threatening, and above all I don't want their targets to see the fear behind the mask and get hope that they could defeat my minions.

Looking at it from an opsec point of view and it makes total sense, however, so long as your minions can all recognise each other. Failing that, its the information age so just use facial recognition - not as biometric locks, but to identify unique individuals and alert security of unrecognised people or people with face coverings. Uniforms and battledress could even incorporate body-worn cameras in order to identify individuals both to the minion wearing the device, and also as a remote "eye on the ground" to the security team.

Biometrics should always only be used as usernames and not passwords, both in fiction/sci-fi and real life.

It could be to keep track of the official weapon, which would imply they have another one with questionable purpose

The only thing "obvious" is that your hypothesis coincidentally lined up with the actual reason...this time.

I guessed this before clicking, but its still interesting to know it exists. My next question is are they like invasion stripes on an aeroplane - i.e. they are changed before an operation so the enemy can't copy them - or are they coded depending on factors like rank or specific training, like the shapes on UK police cars?

Yea thanks, and now any and all potential misdeeders will attach it to their Glocks ...

Obviously they will change the tape now that this version has been burned.

If it's anything like military colour codes, they'd be swapped regularly as a matter of course.

I have no idea how often they swap, but generally speaking, Federal agents unholster their weapons in public very rarely. So, there is probably not as much need for frequent rotation compared to the military.

They may have a "colour of the day" and routinely swap them. Hard to know how they're affixed, though - they don't look very swappable.

Could be something as simple as hook and loop tape. One side is permanently/semi-permanently affixed to the slide the other side gets swapped based on x criteria. That's how I'd do it. The military loves velcro.

True, but the photos don't seem to show the depth that hook-and-loop would add. That, and even the milimetre that hook-and-loop would add could impede draw and reholstering.

I was in a non-US military and we used electrical tape - two or three strips around rifle magazines.

It would be crazy if they didn't have a color of the day, but then again, humans are not always rational, and it looks like it's not the type of tape that comes off easily--though it's impossible to tell just from a photo.

Yeah, that's my take too. If it's removable/swappable, it'd have to be something that never impedes drawing or reholstering, which makes me suspect it's more permanent than hook-and-loop, at least.

I've had strangely a lot of experience with stickers and sticky tape, and the material the sticker is made of can aid removal even if the glue is sturdy: paper stickers tear, but thicker plastic stickers will hold together as you force them away from the glue. Alternatively, the glue could be water soluble, or perhaps soften with heat.

How many variations are possible? If they're supposed to be recognized at a glance, from across the room, during a firefight, how elaborate can the code be?

s/It's/It might be/

While the article implies it has the answer (including with the title).. it's clear they're speculating and don't have the answer. A quote from someone who is qualified to speculate: "is not a totally uncommon practice"

Wait. How does one have time to see a small piece of tape on a gun before making a decision to shoot someone with a gun pointed at you?

There are a lot more common scenarios than the "split second don't shoot reaction" scene from every movie ever. From the videos I've seen a lot of officers were co-mingling with the "protesters", it would be nice to ID someone easily who *isn't* pointing a gun at you but who also has a gun.

They don’t. But if you see someone else with a gun before they see you, it might give some idea as to who they are.

It is so you can flash the side of your gun at someone else in a dark/smoky/obscured room and they can see the signal, but you don't need to completely surrender situational initiative. The tape is reflective to help in this case. The person flashing the sign knows it is not 100% certain to work, but it better than metallic crickets or pass phrases.

Habit. They're trained to take in the scene in order to e.g. evaluate if they have a safe shot. Even if it only works some of the time, every time it works is a gain.

Is it better to not even have a chance to work? Not sure why the choice has to be between a 100% effective solution and a "better than nothing" solution.

It's like saying to the Fire Extinguisher salesman, "But what if the fire is too big and I run out of propellant? No thanks I'm not going to own one."

That isn't the point of the exercise.

Suppose you're an officer responding to a shootout between two randoms. The tape signals whether either of them are police.

(This is why I would never carry a gun in this country. Suppose you do stop some sort of crime in public at gunpoint-- any trigger-happy idiot who walks in is going to see you as the aggressor.)

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